My excursions into the mythology of the Wold Newton family
began, like Philip Josť Farmer, through the pulps. However in my case it was he
paperback reprints of Tarzan, Doc Savage and the Shadow. I must have been
around eight when I was watching a Johnny Weismuller movie on television. When
my father walked into the room he laughed at what I was watching. He commented,
ďThat isnít Tarzan.Ē† A couple of days
later he handed me a 1964 Whitman edition of Tarzan of the Apes. I
remember that it was a new book so the stores must have still been carrying
them in 1968. Once I had devoured that I bugged my parents for more Tarzan
books. At that time Ballantine was still publishing their reprints so I was
able to buy half of them and get the rest out of the library. Tarzan introduced
me to the wider world of Burroughs and to adventure fiction in general. My
father had small collection of science fiction paperbacks which included five
or six Doc Savage novels and two Shadow novels. I also became hooked on Doc
Savage and began collecting what paperbacks of his I could find.

My first exposure to the works of Philip Josť Farmer came
from reading either A Private Cosmos, which was the third in his World
of Tiers or The Fabulous Riverboat, the second in his Riverworld series.
I remember really liking A Private Cosmos and while was intrigued by The
Fabulous Riverboat, at 12, I was befuddled by it.† Shortly after that I read Dare and Lord
Tyger.

I was always a bit of an omnivorous reader but my two
favorite subjects were science fiction/adventure fiction and history. I really
enjoyed biographies and one day while perusing the biography section of the
local library I found the first edition hardback of Tarzan Alive, which
must have been out only a few months at that time. I grabbed it, thinking to
myself that it was a good thing no one else had noticed this great book.
Already familiar with most of the Tarzan books by that time it was a treat for
Mr. Farmer to show how Burroughs had exaggerated some of the details of the
books but had been fairly faithful to how it really happened. When I finished
the book I was convinced for a time anyway, that Tarzan was indeed a real
person. Especially since the book had been in the biography section of the
library. It wouldnít be there if it wasnít true, would it? I was less convinced
about the family tree but since I had already read some of Michael Harrisonís
books about Sherlock Holmes, I thought maybe parts of the family tree were real.

However as I began to look up various members of the
family tree and read their exploits, I knew that he had tricked me, but in a
good way. One of the benefits of having read Tarzan Alive was that it
introduced me to a wealth of literary figures that I knew nothing about, such
as Professor Challenger, Wolf Larsen, A. J. Raffles, Alan Quatermain and the
works of Sabatini, Austen,† George
MacDonald Fraser.

A couple of years later when I saw Doc Savage: His
Apocalyptic Life on Walgreens bookrack I snatched it up. In addition to
literary works such as RaintreeCounty, The
Sot-Weed Facto, A Prisoner of Zenda, and characters such as Josť ph Jorkens, Colonel Clay, and ArseneLupin, I was pleased to
see that Doc Savage was related to some of my favorite character such as James
Bond Mr. Moto, The Avenger, Kickaha,
Phileas Fogg and Sam Spade. I was also intrigued to see Manuel of Poictesme and Kilgore Trout among the members of this
family tree. I had read CabellísFigures of Earth
which had been reprinted by Ballantine and Vonnegutís Breakfast of Champions
and this mention prompted to seek out and read more of their adventures. I
was thrilled, and a bit confused, a few years later when Kilgore Trout came out
with Venus on the Half Shell.†
Trout was a fictional character, right. Or was he?

Venus on the Half Shell was one of my favorite books when I was a teenager
and I passed it around to a lot of my friends. It was years before I learned
that it had actually been written by Philip Josť Farmer.

From the ages of 13 to 17, I was really fascinated by the
concept of the Wold Newton family and such books like The Adventure of the
Peerless Peer and The Other Log of Phileas Fogg only spurred my
enthusiasm. Using graph paper I created a master family tree that incorporated
both of the family trees in Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His
Apocalyptic Life and added on material found in The Other Log of Phileas
Fogg and the The Lavalite World.
Once that was done, I began expanding the tree on my own. I created extensive
family trees adding in a mixture of fictional and historical gunslingers,
criminals. I also added Asian characters such as Charlie Chan, characters from
the James Bond novels, Mark Twainís characters and characters from blaxploitation films. Inspired by Vincent McHughís Caleb CatlumísAmerica, which had Americaís folk heroes as part of an
extended family tree I also added some these folk
heroes such as John Henry, Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill and Stormalong.† This was all done with idea of writing a Doc
Savage book that would incorporate the Wold Newton family concept. Eventually I
learned however that such a book would most likely never make it to print and
so dropped the idea of the novel. However I did sporadically work on my family
trees for amusement.

†

When I first got onto the internet back in 1997 once of
the first things I did was search for anything Wold Newton related. Although I
did not find anything I kept trying. If Win Eckert had anything up at that time
I did not find it. This was in the pre-Google dark
ages.

Eventually I found I did find Win Eckert's An Expansion
of Philip Josť †Farmerís Wold Newton Universe site <http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Pulp.htm>.
At that time it consisted of a rather short crossover chronology, a couple of
articles by Lou Mougin and a humongous graphic was a
collage of several pulp cover scans. That graphic took forever to load in those
days of 28.8 modems.† I became a very
frequent visitor to the site but was kind of disappointed that although the
chronology grew a bit, there was a distinct lack of articles. Despite having
created several Wold Newton derived genealogies in the eighties, I was not
currently doing any Wold Newton related stuff but rather was currently involved
in creating my El Head character and so was working exclusively on that.
However it bugged me that no one was writing any articles about the Wold Newton
family like was in Tarzan Alive or the Doc Savage biography.

So after a great deal of trepidation, I sent Win a rather long email about my theory to incorporate
Charlie Chan into the Wold Newton Family. I did not hear from him for some
time, so I figured he thought the idea had no merit. One day out of the blue
his email popped up with a request for me to turn the theory into an
article.† This became the Asian
Detectives in the Wold Newton Universe article <http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Pulp.htm>,
which I believe was the first to delve into Wold Newton speculative genealogy
on his site.

I kept working on El Head stories but kept coming
back to Win's page. I saw that other people had also begun putting up articles
and Win's chronology had grown to incorporate the Highlander type Immortals,
Star Trek, the X-Files and things like that. After my Asian Detectives article
had appeared Mark Brown had submitted From Pygmalion to Casablanca: The Genealogy of Henry Higgins
<http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Articles.htm#Casablanca> and a couple
of other speculative articles to Winís site.

Around that time the film The Wild Wild
West came out, I began to wonder how to reconcile the film with the
television series. I thought of my old genealogy which I had created over
twenty years before. By cannibalizing my Wold Newton family tree and
incorporating some of the mythology that Farmer had created when he wrote The
Other Log of Phileas Fogg I began writing The Wild Wild
West article which blossomed into a Wold Wold West
article which not only reconciled the Wild Wild West
film and television show but it also incorporated many of the Western
characters that had been in my Wold Newton Family Tree. †As I was working on the Wold Wold West article I began to think on how to reconcile the
existence of Star Trek, the Highlander Immortals, X-Files and what not with the
Capelleans and the World of Tiers series. This lead to an Aliens Among Us article. In creating the two articles, to help
me keep things straight I used Win's The Wold Newton Universe Crossover
Chronology and added in my own stuff which lead to the creation of The Revised
Wold Newton Crossover Chronology Crossover Chronology

I submitted the articles to Win. He replied that he really enjoyed them but that at that
time he was not going to have the time to put articles on his website. He said
that one of his other contributors was planning on creating an ancillary site
and suggested I do so as well. He also thought because of the length of the
articles and the revised chronology that it would be a good start for a new
site. We worked out the details which would distinguish his work from mine.
Since my site was intended to be a sort of look behind the history on Win's
site, I called it The Secret History of the Wold Newton Universe. I have since
shortened slightly to The Wold Newton Universe: A Secret History. <http://www.pjfarmer.com/secret/content/Contents.htm>

It was
about this time that Win invited me to join a Wold Newton email group. The
email group was eventually transmogrified into a Wold Newton e-group, the
latest version of which is simply called Wold Newton Family <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wold_Newton_Family/>

Shortly after I put my site up
I was joined by another site, The Wold Newton Chronicles <
http://www.pjfarmer.com/chronicles/index.ht> site Mark Brown. One of his
first articles on that site was The Magnificent Gordons,
<http://www.pjfarmer.com/chronicles/magnificent_gordons.htm > which was
in part an extension of the Gordon genealogy I had created for The Wold Wold West article. This was one of the first instances of
cross-referencing between articles created by the early writers of Wold Newton
speculation.

After Winís Markís and my sites had been up for a while,
Jess Nevins created Jess Nevins' Wold Newton site, †<http://ratmmjess.tripod.com/wold.html>
where he posted his own Wold Newton speculation. A bit later Jean Marc Lofficier created the French Wold Newton site <http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/wnu1.htm>which
provided a Gallic-centric version of the Wold Newton Universe.

Mark, Winís and my sites were on three different servers
for a while. Eventually Mike Croteau and Rick Beaulieu offered to host our
three sites on the www.pjfarmer.com domain, where the Official Philip Josť Farmer
homepage is hosted. Our sites were chosen because there was some cross
referencing between the three, creating an informal ďconsensusĒ Wold Newton
Universe. This cross referencing came about in a couple of different ways. One
way was that various authors had articles posted on two or three of the sites.
For example Win has articles posted on his site and the Chronicles site. I have
articles posted on my site and Winís site. Brad Mengel and Art Bollman have
articles posted on all three sites.

Another manner in which this cross fertilization took
place was in the process of article creation. Mark, Win and I provided each
other, and article writers who followed, with feedback and suggestions as they
created their articles. This was either through the public message board or in
private emails. For instance, Matthew Baugh, Mark Brown and I helped Win with The
Amazing Lanes, <http://www.pjfarmer.com/chronicles/Lane.htm> his first
foray into speculative genealogy. I also remember providing feedback and
suggestions to Jess Nevins, Brad Mengel, Chuck Loridans, Art Bollman, Matthew
Baugh, David Kennedy and a few others.

Another form of the cross fertilization took place in the
form of what could be termed spring boarding, that is one piece leading either
to anotherís creation or providing the impetus for the article to be created.
Mark Brownís The Magnificent Gordons spring boarded
from my Wold Wold article. I think Mark had
previously been working on a Gordonís genealogy but when my article appeared;
he had something else to link it two. Another example is John Smallís Kiss of the Vampire. <http://www.pjfarmer.com/chronicles/smallvamp.htm>
John took an email I had written speculating on the connection between Lady
Rawhide and Vampirella and turned it into a gem of an
article. Another of couple springboards was Winís Amazing Laneís article which led to my series
of articles about the Jekyll and Hyde family and Peter Cooganís
John Carter is Phra the Phoenician which led to John Carter:
Torn from Phoenician Dreams and the subsequent articles in our John Carter
series.

This cross pollination between our sites led to the
creation of the book Myths for the Modern Age: Philip Josť Farmerís Wold
Newton Universe, Monkeybrain books, November
2005. This volume articles from Philip Josť Farmer and articles from each of
the owners of the three www.pjfarmer.com hosted sites, and I believe at least
one article from each of the sites from other contributors. These articles were
revised and expanded for print publication.

††††††††† Myths for the Modern Age: Philip Josť
Farmerís Wold Newton Universe was the crowning
achievement of the ďconsensusĒ for it gave their fannishscribblings a sense of legitimacy. However, it was
also for all intents and purposes the peak of the Woldnewtonry on the internet,
as many of the authors of those pieces went onto other writing projects; some
Wold Newton related, others tangentially so. Most Wold
Newton related activity on the internet now comes from message boards.

††††††††† I do however remain hopeful that their
will be a renaissance from a new generation of Wold Newton researchers who will
write new articles and create their own sites.